


Lonely at the Top

by mathildia



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Aftercare, Blood, Bucky's broken everything, Guilt, Kissing, M/M, OH STEVE, Top Drop, barbed wire, bullwhip, flagellation, past Bucky/skinny Steve, service top steve rogers, unhealthy masochism, vague religious overtones
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-01
Updated: 2015-07-01
Packaged: 2018-04-07 05:06:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,764
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4250487
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mathildia/pseuds/mathildia
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Bucky can’t let go of The Winter Solider until he’s been punished for all his crimes. So Steve helps. Of course Steve helps.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lonely at the Top

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Dira Sudis (dsudis)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/dsudis/gifts).



Bucky had said, “So, go to The Mole’s House. They’ll have something.” And Steve had said, “The Mole’s House won’t still be there, Buck.” But it was -

\- it was, and it was exactly the same. A tiny little shop, in a street of tiny shops, where one could buy ropes in every colour and ball gags that had spikes embedded in the red rubber, and chains that would hold anything – or anyone. The Mole’s House was a good place to know.

The woman behind the counter was a small, smaller than Steve ever was, but bright with energy, brisk - with dark, tight eyes like bugle beads. She sat behind the counter working on a wide strip of black leather with a knife easily the length of her forearm. She seemed to have gotten older. If she was the same woman who had served Steve in the thirties, she’d be impossibly old now, but it sure looked like her. That wasn’t right, but it was comforting. And though this cavern of bondage toys was a strange place to find comfort in, there it was. It was always reassuring when Steve found something that had stayed the same in his kaleidoscope life.

‘Are you alone?’ The woman said. ‘No gentleman friend today?’

‘No,’ said Steve. “Not today.”

'Ah, that's quite the shame, sir.' The woman glanced down, gouged heavily with her knife twice, and then continued. ‘Do bring him next time. Lovely boy, that one.’ She glanced down again, then said, ‘So are you still interested in the percussion section, dear?” The wall behind her was hung with canes and whips and paddles and crops, and had one long bullwhip snaking across the top.

That first time they’d been here, Bucky had jabbed Steve hard in the ribs when he'd taken down a bullwhip. 'Put that back, you dummy. You can’t handle that.’

“What? I like it. I’m the boss, what if I want a whip?” Steve looked up at Bucky. “You don’t want me to whip you, Buck? ‘Cause I reckon you do. I reckon you really do.”

Bucky bit his lip for a second, eyes popping wide and holding Steve’s gaze like he’d lost himself to an idea, to a great, overwhelming something, but then he snapped out of it and laughed, an arm slipping around Steve’s little waist. “The boss, huh?” Bucky’s black eyebrows slid up and then down his forehead. “A real boss would know not to take something like that when he wouldn't know where to start.” Bucky took the whip gently out of Steve’s hands and set it aside. “Now this, on the other hand…” He reached up and took down a long whippy cane, as lithe and elegant as Steve had been back then. And when Bucky had placed it in Steve’s hand, Steve swallowed suddenly and hard.

“Yeah?” Bucky had said, fingers’s slipping under Steve’s shirt. “Yeah?” And then his mouth was close again. And he was whispering. “You could really fuck me up with this. Trust me. These things fucking hurt, baby. I’d be begging you to stop.”

“Really? And should I?” Steve’s breath caught around these words. “Should I stop then? If you begged me to, Buck?”

“No. Oh no. Never stop just cause I’m begging, sweetheart. I like it. I like to beg… Heh. You.” And with that, both of them were breathing hard in the tiny shop. They’d bought the cane, left the bullwhip. And that night Bucky had begged Steve to stop.

Steve could use a bullwhip now. He’d bought one on a strange impulse from a shop in DC. It had been a friday evening, and by the end of the weekend he could snuff out a candle across the room.

So the implement was taken care of. All he needed was the hardware. Bucky had insisted that the restraints needed to be adequate. That had been his exact word ‘adequate’. So Steve told the woman exactly what he needed to restrain.

He pointed at his own chest. “He’s like, like me now.”

The woman nodded. The woman in The Mole’s House - if this was the same woman - never asked questions. She looked at Steve and said: 'I think you should step out back, sir.'

She led the way through a beaded curtain and into a room that was even darker and more groaningly ominous than the shop proper. The room was full of furniture. Strange, unusual furniture. Steve had only been in this room once before. With Bucky, of course. They hadn’t bought anything, just nudged each other, then gasped at the price tags. There had been another man in the room that day, he’d looked them both over, then approached and said something quietly to Bucky, while looking at Steve. Bucky had laughed and said loudly, “Sorry, sugar, but he charges more for that than you could ever afford.” And Steve had blushed and looked away,

The woman shuffled over to a wall where a mass of chains and rings and hooks and manacles were tangled and draped together, swooping off to ceiling hooks and dangling like a forest canopy. But as, she turned, weighing a great iron ring in her hands and grinning toothily, Steve saw something else and his idea changed completely. 'I want that,’ he said, pointing across the room to something in a dark corner. There’d be no way Bucky could say that wasn’t adequate.

The woman followed Steve's eye line and her grin spread wider. 'Oh yes sir, oh yes.' She dropped the ring and nodded sagely. 'That would be quite the perfect thing sir. I'm impressed.'

Steve nodded and wasn't going to say anything, but then said, “How much?”

“Barbed wire?,” the woman said and shrugged. “You won’t need much. Let’s call it a hundred. I'll throw in some cutters too.”

“Thanks,” said Steve. And that was the easy part done.

*

This place was deeply unpleasant. Abandoned military and, from the the look of it, mostly used for special interrogation, rendition. When Steve had found Bucky here, in the cage in the basement, it hadn’t occurred to him for a moment that Bucky was imprisoned inside it of his own volition, or that he would refuse to leave without… 

Without something he believed would make him safe. He’d said, “You have to punish me, Steve. I’ve done such terrible things.” And Steve had said, “None of them were your fault, Buck. I can’t do that.” And Bucky had given him such a desperate, hopeless look then, like his eyes were bottomless. “You have to Steve. How can I let him go unless he’s been punished?” And Steve had said, “Okay, Buck. If that’s what you need, I’ll do whatever you want.” He hadn’t known then, quite what it would be.

He knew now. As Steve made his preparations for what was to be done, Bucky stared at the open the door of the cage, breath hitching. “I’m not, I’m not coming out for it. I’ll come out when it’s done”

Steve nodded and didn’t shiver. “It’s fine Buck. I’m gonna tie you to the cage for it. But to the outside of it. You have to come out if you want me to do it like you said. I can’t throw a whip inside there.”

Steve saw Bucky’s throat move. “You can use a whip now?”

“Sure can.”

“Well you can’t tie me with ropes.” Bucky swallowed. “I’ll fucking break them. You know I will.” There was one window in the basement, high in the back wall. A bit of sun dripped through it, showing up a bright shaft of dust particles. It made a small, gold square on the floor, just outside the open door of the cage.

“Didn’t get ropes,” said Steve. “I did listen to you, you know.”

“What did you get?”

Steve held up the barbed wire and swallowed. 

Bucky had said, when they discussed how this should be, “It has to be brutal. For him. He has to know he’s being punished.” His eyes widened as he looked at the wire. His throat moved. “Oh. Steve,” Bucky said - his voice was soft, strange.

“Is that okay?” And at that moment, as he said that, Steve was utterly convinced that it wasn’t okay.

“It's fine, yes. It’s… Yeah. It’s good.” It was like listening to an untuned radio. “It’s real, real good, baby.” It was like Bucky’s voice was barely there, fading and wavering, disappearing into waves of static. Steve had to concentrate on every word. It was so unlike everything he had ever expected about this impossible reunion. And he kept wondering, and he never quite knew, if he’d rather have not had Bucky returned to him at all, than have him returned ruined like this. Returned ruined, like a wish on a money’s paw.

And sometimes he thought that maybe it was down to him, that he had wished too hard for Bucky to come back to him at any cost, and willed all of these horrors to happen to bring him through time.

Steve nodded.

“You did real good, Steve,” Bucky said, and he walked out of the open cage door and crossed the little sunlit square, pulling his still-buttoned shirt off straight over his head. He walked around the cage, raised both his arms and rested them against the bars, fingers curled around the crosspiece at the top.

At first Steve purposely didn't look at him, but then he did, and he got weaker and harder at once. Steve’s mouth was so dry as he looked at the undulating muscle sliding under the taut stretched skin. _Bucky._ Even more beautiful, with his arms stretched up and his back so… It was so different. No marks, no, but bigger and heavier, such a heft to him now. Looking at the thickness Bucky had, Steve felt almost lithe and elegant. He hadn’t felt that in a long, long time.

He needed to be up, eye level with Bucky's raised hand to bind it with the wire - so many things he hadn't thought of. Luckily there was an old dirty chair in the corner of the basement. As he dragged it over, its metal legs screamed against the concrete. 

He climbed up on it and, first he bound Bucky’s metal wrist to the cage with the wire. Then he adjusted the chair and bound the flesh wrist. He tried to do it careful, but the sharp points of the wire sunk into Bucky’s skin all the same. Bucky hissed at each, but also moaned a little, just once or twice, and again, as Steve adjusted it all to cinch it tighter. When it was done he climbed down and replaced the chair in the corner, then looked back over. Bucky was staring at him, over his shoulder. “You okay, Buck,” said Steve. “Is it too much?”

“No.” Bucky blinked. “No. It ain’t enough, Steve. I could rip out of this and you know it. You could. When you start to punish me, I might do anything.”

“Bucky, it doesn’t have to be-“

“Yeah. It does. Put some more on. Do my ankles and my chest too.”

Steve looked again at the solid flat muscle of Bucky’s back. “The whip’ll catch it if I put it there.”

“Yeah it will. Yeah. Good.”

And Steve didn’t say anything else. He bound Bucky’s ankles with more barbed wire and put two long loops of it around his torso, one under his arms and one at his waist. It had been a long time since he’d touched Bucky’s skin anywhere but his hand. As he was pressed close behind him, Bucky whispered, “I like it, Steve. I like this. I’m getting hard.” Steve looked over Bucky’s shoulder. There was a bulge in his pants. “Do you like it?” Bucky said. “Do you still like it this way?”

Steve looked at the barbed wire around Bucky’s waist. He was already bleeding there. “I dunno, Buck. Just let me give you what you need to feel safe.”

Bucky looked over his shoulder, twisting in the wire. Steve saw it tear him, as he did it. “Okay. Okay then. Just ruin me. I mean it. No fucking limits. Shut me the fuck down. Promise me, Steve. Do this for me?” Bucky’s eyes were big and wet.

Steve nodded, and didn’t think, and went to get the the bull whip out of the bag. When he stepped back, took a deep breath and cracked it in the air, every muscle on Bucky's beautiful back tensed.

Steve took his aim and, this time, when the whip cracked, it was just a part of its flight path onto Bucky's body. It hit, and Bucky screamed, and his precious skin split, and the first droplets of blood were whisked up into the air. And Bucky yelled, yelled, “Oh fuck. Oh God. Steve. Yes-“

He did it again. Hit Bucky. Again and again. Everything in the room stepped up to the rhythm. The whip flew over and over, cracked the air, filled the room with the scent of blood. It was like a dance, the little strip of leather moving blur-fast, going wherever Steve's wanted it to go. He only had to think it and the whip was there, criss-crossing the beautiful red stripes, overlaying, reopening, hurting, scourging. And Bucky was not stoic and still, like Steve would have imagined he’d be, he was twisting fire. He was alive. More alive than Steve had seen him for so, so long. Bucky screamed – no, not screamed – Bucky howled, howled at every stroke, bellowed, made a noise like a dying animal, and begged and begged for the pain to stop.

_Never stop just cause I’m begging, sweetheart._

When the shirt began to stick to Steve’s back, he stopped and took it off. When his hair began to stick to his forehead, getting in his eyes, he used the shirt as a rag to wipe himself down. And finally, Steve noticed how thirsty he was and, without looking back at what he’d created, he walked through into the next room, where he had left his water.

Steve pressed his back against the closed door. He looked at the whip, dripping from his hand and snaked on the floor, looking like nothing of consequence, least of all a talisman of absolution for an ex-assassin who needed some kind of ceremony to wash him clean of all his sins. He was shaking and felt oddly empty. Hyper-aware. This feeling was one he'd had before, with Bucky, years ago. And when he'd described to him, he’d spat the rag out of his mouth, laughing, and said: 'It sure is lonely at the top.' 

It took a shake of himself and long drink of water, but then Steve, forced himself back into the other room, raised the whip again, ready to see this through to the bitter end.

And finally, finally Bucky gave in, let the wires take his dead weight, and slumped, like Dali's Christ, all exhausted muscle and blood. Steve walked around him slowly, through the open door into the cage, to face him through the bars - trailing a casual finger in one pretty nasty wheal, snaked under Bucky's arm and onto his chest where the bullwhip’s tongue had flipped through the bars and wrapped itself right around him.

Bucky's face was almost hidden, impossible to read, to tell if he was even conscious. His head hung down, limp between the bars of the cage. Hair, damply matted, stuck to his forehead. Sweat dripped into his eyes. Dreamily, Steve reached out and raised the compliant chin, leaned closer and kissed Bucky - licked at his lips, until his mouth opened dopily and let Steve in. But Bucky wasn’t kissing him. Bucky’s mouth just hung open, soft and empty. 

“Please,” Steve whispered against Bucky’s tongue, aching for a kiss now after all he’d done. “Please, please.” He pressed his open mouth tight over Bucky’s again. 

And suddenly Bucky did kiss back, savage and hungry. Vicious, almost. Steve moaned, weak to it, and let Bucky shove his tongue in hard. It had a tiny tang of blood to it - he must have bitten it. 

Steve pushed his bare chest to Bucky’s through the bars, pressing himself against the lines of barbed wire on Bucky’s chest. The way it bit him felt good and real. He played his hands down Bucky’s sides, even let his fingers glide onto Bucky’s back and touch the welts, skim in the blood. Bucky moaned a little a that. An old familiar pleasure/pain moan, so evocative that Steve shuddered at the sound; he took hold of Bucky’s hips and jerked, pushing their groins together, rubbing his dick against Bucky’s, both of them were getting hard… and then Bucky twisted away, took his mouth off Steve’s.

Steve looked at Bucky and glazed met Steve's across continents, across decades. Bucky shoulders and chest heaved, his breathing seemed laboured. ‘Bucky?' Steve said softly, reaching up to hold the cold fingers of Bucky's right hand 'are you okay?”

There was a long pause before the limp exhausted mouth began to move. “More,” he whispered. “Please. I need more. More, Steve.”

“Bucky…I…” All Steve wanted to do was kiss Bucky again… kiss him nice, slowly, relishing his soft, broken-down compliance. His mouth almost watered with want of it. But he didn't. He said, “Okay. but not your back. Not on your back.”

Bucky nodded. “Yeah,” he said, “I know. Take my pants off, baby. Please. Hurt me there. Just like you used to.” 

Steve swallowed at the thought of Bucky naked. He didn’t speak. He took a sharp step away, and made himself walk slowly out of the cage. He reached around to undo Bucky's pants and let them fall to the floor - revealing plenty more unbroken, flesh for his whip. And he didn’t look at the shape of Bucky’s ass. Or reminisce. He didn’t let himself. He didn’t ghost his hand over Bucky’s cock. Didn’t think of how sweet it would be to finish the job his kisses had started. To jerk Bucky off now and make him come while he worried the welts on his back just a little, just to make him gasp harder.

He didn’t. He repositioned, he shifted, swallowed, and beat Bucky bloody all over again.

He'd normally find this sort of thing a bit disgusting. Blood. Although he used to like spanking Bucky fine, and the cane and the belt more than fine - not so much that he enjoyed the hurting, but the noises Bucky made, the way he wanted it, what it did to him, him so soft after, he liked all that - but this was a whole ‘nother kind of thing. However, back inside the cage, in front of the barred wall Bucky was bound to, kneeling at Bucky's feet to lick the little trickles of splashed blood away from his dick, wasn't disgusting in the least. It was communion.

Bucky started to get hard from Steve’s tongue, and Steve put a steadying hand around the top of Bucky’s thigh, used the other to work the shaft of Bucky’s spit-wet cock. He sucked and licked at the tip, which was slick with Bucky’s spill. And, after a few moments, Bucky was hard and Steve took the whole thing down his throat - and he didn’t care to consider the exact cause of the tears that were prickling his eyes, when his nose pushed into the soft, damp hair at Bucky’s crotch.

As he slipped his mouth back up Bucky’s dick, above him, Bucky said, “Steve?”

Steve ran his hand up, over the soft, blood-sticky curve of Bucky’s ass, to rub at his flank, above the first band of wire, gentle and reassuring. He took his mouth right off Bucky’s dick. “Hey,” he said softly. 

“You don’t…,” Bucky was struggling over the words. “You don’t need to…”

“”I want to, Buck. This is for me. Is it okay?”

“Yeah. Okay.” Bucky shoved it out on a breath. His breathing was still laboured. “I’m, I’m so sorry, Steve. I’m so sorry for so much.”

“I know.” Steve kissed the tip of Bucky’s dick and got ready to take the whole thing down his throat again. “I know, Buck.”

When he took it, Bucky’s hips jolted forward so hard, Steve almost fell backward. But he didn’t. He sucked until Bucky was moaning and jerking his hips steadily, and then Steve put his hands on Bucky’s bloody, bruised ass and made him hiss with pain. And a few moments later, when Bucky came, Steve felt a couple of soft droplets fall on the back of his neck. And they might have been blood or sweat, but they probably weren’t.

 

*

Much later, Steve was just sat on the old bed in another of the basement rooms with Bucky in his lap, wrapped in a blanket and held tight and close. They’d been like this for an hour. So quiet. Steve thought Bucky might be sleeping, the weight of his body was so soft and firm. 

And he was out of the cage he’d shut himself in. He’d let go of enough guilt and fear to, at least, to do that. Bucky's guilt. Steve’s guilt. Steve sighed and rubbed his eyes. Lonely at the top.

He felt Bucky nuzzling closer into his chest. “Buck? You awake?”

“Yeah.” Bucky turned his head so he was looking up at Steve. His eyes were soft, like he was still flying. “Steve, baby, it’s okay, you know. What you did. It's okay. You did so good. You were so good for me.”

Steve said nothing. Bucky reached his hand out from under the blanket. An hour ago, there had been a bracelet of gore on his wrist where the wire had been, but that had faded now to a smudgy circlet of red-black and silver-grey. He touched Steve’s face.

“Maybe next time you can decide what we do,” said Bucky. And he smiled, and it was the first time Steve had seen in smile in so long. There was Bucky. Oh, there he was. It was like Steve had needed to flay his old skin off him to find him underneath, all pink and new. 

Steve pulled him closer, stroked Bucky’s hair. “Yeah. Okay. But next time, can it be more… More, less.”

“Yes,” said Bucky, “it can be be more, less.” He sucked his own bottom lip a second, and when it pushed back out of his mouth, Steve pulled him in, right in, and kissed him so, so slow.


End file.
